FITNESS FRIDAY – We heart Tabatas!

If you have ever taken a FIT CHICKS Bootcamp, you know one thing is true…we LOVE Tabatas! They are all of our chicks’ most “love to hate” exercise because not only are they easy to understand, mucho fun, burn a ton of calories in a super short period of time but you can do them anywhere – and they only take 4 minutes!

And if you are not familiar with the wonderful world of tabatas then you (and your workouts!) have definitely have been missing out! But not to worry chicks – that is why we are here It is time for a little “Tabata 101″ – chick style!

What are Tabatas?

They are simple! It is made up of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest. This cycle is repeated 8 times (for a total of 4-minutes).

But to get the results you have to push to “your 9 out of 10.” During the 20sec of work, you gotta work! Then you get 10 secs of recover. At the end of the 4 mins, you should feel very gassed out ( or the “ugly place” as we like to call it As I say to my chicks in class, if you feel that you can barely go on you are doing this perfectly!)

Now you are ready to start tabata training, here are a couple of extra chick tips to make sure you are ready to rock…

CHICK TIPS:

· Do a quick Tabata set in the morning to raise your metabolism, and burn more fat throughout the day.

· Alternate exercises if you wish to give your work out a variety. For example, maybe you do squats on work period 1, and then on work period 2 you do jumping jacks, and you alternate between the two.

· Find a good Tabata timer! It can be distracting when trying to focus on a timer. Check out www.tabatatimer.com and they also have a phone app download.

Tabata timer on my Iphone - Im addicted!

· Start off light. Treat your first few Tabata workouts as practice to make sure you understand the pattern and how your body feels afterward. Ask yourself if you could go harder. You have to get your body out of your comfort zone to make changes so push!

So challenge yourself this weekend and add in tabatas to your workout – we promise you will love them!